Health affairs
-
State actions requiring adolescent girls to receive the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine created controversy following the vaccine's approval in 2006. Some health professionals worried that the controversy might dampen public support for those state policies and for other school immunizations in general. ⋯ We discovered that public support for the HPV vaccine mandates wanes when the public is informed that the policies are controversial. However, the experimental survey also revealed that exposure to this policy controversy did not spill over and reduce public support for immunizations in general.
-
Minorities suffer more frequently and more severely from many diseases than do non-Hispanic whites, and they often receive lower-quality care, which leads to poorer health outcomes. Given the diversity of the US population, comparative effectiveness research should capture the health outcomes of racial and ethnic minority groups and investigate whether disparities reflect variations in care or different responses to treatment. We recommend a number of measures to ensure that this research addresses the needs of minorities, including greater attention to subgroup analysis. We also recommend the increased recruitment of minorities for clinical trials, and such measures as using community health workers to translate research results in ways that will increase their relevance to minority patients.
-
Enactment of the federal stimulus and health reform legislation heralds the beginning of a national comparative effectiveness research program. This article suggests how the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) can, with collaborators, build a high-performing comparative effectiveness research system. ⋯ A national database for effectiveness research studies should be established by presidential order. HHS will need to support all of these pieces and take the lead in creating a rapid-learning culture for the US health system.
-
This paper presents updated national health spending projections for 2009-2019 that take into account recent comprehensive health reform legislation and other relevant changes in law and regulations. Relative to our February 2010 projections under prior law, average annual growth in national health spending over the projection period is estimated to be 0.2 percentage point higher than our previous estimate. The health care share of gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to be 0.3 percentage point higher in 2019. Within these net overall impacts are larger differences for trends in spending and spending growth by payer, attributable to reform's many major changes to health care coverage and financing.
-
Use of the World Health Organization's Surgical Safety Checklist has been associated with a significant reduction in major postoperative complications after inpatient surgery. We hypothesized that implementing the checklist in the United States would generate cost savings for hospitals. ⋯ In a hospital with a baseline major complication rate after surgery of at least 3 percent, the checklist generates cost savings once it prevents at least five major complications. Using the checklist would both save money and improve the quality of care in hospitals throughout the United States.